2. Specks of Cosmic Dust #2
Still, without an ember, I felt like a failure.
I ran my fingertips down the potens lock resting on the shoulder of my robe with the rest of my brown hair.
With my gait, the shock of iridescent pastel greens and pinks moved up and down the strands as a reminder of what I was supposed to be.
I sighed. An alignment birthday and a potens lock were great, but without the defining characteristic of a Sideri, I wasn’t sure what I was.
Besides defective, apparently. The preteens had been very clear on that point.
I exited the library and picked up speed.
My slippers landed silently on the marble as I passed by the corridor to my quarters.
I was running late. At the end of the hall, the weaving that depicted the stars falling on the city finally came into view—threads of gold and silver streaming down over gabled rooftops and lamplit streets.
Boot heels echoed from around the corner. Cutting it close! Any second now, the guard would make the turn.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
I skidded to a stop and slipped into the narrow space behind the tapestry hanging from the ceiling.
Back against the wall, I slid along the granite and tugged the lumin shard from under my collar.
It hung on a cord around my neck, illuminating the narrow space.
I caught my next breath before it could escape as the guard turned into the corridor.
The ungifted couldn’t see the light leaking around the edges of the heavy weaving. The lumin glow was something only the Sideri could see. I assumed that’s why no one knew about my destination. The sliver of light along the lower crack of the secret door was the only sign it was a door at all.
Getting caught would be disastrous. As the footfalls passed just a few meters from my hiding spot, I stilled and closed my eyes.
If he noticed me, what little freedom I had would be swiftly taken away.
Probably followed by a lengthy lecture about propriety and staying in ‘designated areas’—like a good little defect.
And it would surely kill me. Not in the way that blood ceases to flow through veins, but in the way that extinguishes the parts that dream. That thirst to satisfy unanswered questions. That dare to hope. Those things were no different from the air I breathed.
Also, I'd be bored. Catastrophically, end-of-the-world bored.
I counted the next forty-six clacks of the guard’s boot heels until he turned left at the next corridor. Careful not to rustle the tapestry, I headed in the opposite direction.
Two turns later—and narrowly avoiding the other top-floor guard—I made it to the east service stairs.
I eased the iron handle, hoping the heavy hinges wouldn’t scream.
It was too late for the kitchen staff to be working.
But once, I’d almost run into the steward sneaking down to the servant’s quarters.
And let’s not dwell on those details. He had his clandestine adventures, and I had mine.
I’d begun scurrying down the narrow pie-shaped steps, their edges worn smooth by centuries of feet. The stairwell spiraled past laboratories, testing facilities, workshops, and the nursery. Unlike the top two floors, which were devoted to studying the stars, the lower floors were quiet at night.
A high-pitched squeak from a hinge erupted somewhere on a lower floor. Whoever was coming up was quiet, but the rustle of shifting fabric was unmistakable.
So close to my destination, I cringed as I dove for the door that led to the fourth floor. To my relief, this well-oiled door made little sound. The midwives kept it well-maintained to avoid waking the young ones down the hall in the nursery.
I visited this floor often. Little fingers. Little toes. What’s not to love?
“You’re good with them,” Midwife Rina had told me once, bouncing a fussy young one against her shoulder.
I liked to think that was the reason they put up with me, and not just because I served as their cautionary tale.
“A natural,” she continued, “Pity you’ll never have your own.”
I’d stared at the young one’s little fingers as she slept in my lap. Something twisted low in my belly. “It isn’t just me.”
She nodded. “Well, no Sideri has conceived since the fall. Centuries ago. Now your kind depends on the few ungifted who happen to deliver during the day of the alignment. The embered used to number in the thousands.” She sighed. “Now we prepare ten cribs and hope for eleven.”
Two hundred years of Sideri women who could not conceive.
I had asked Frater Andren about it more than once.
What had caused it? Had the Empyreans ever studied it?
Was there a theory beyond the standard one—that the gods had withdrawn their favor after the fall?
I had never been able to make that answer fit.
The gods in the stories did not punish a hundred generations for the sins of one.
There had to be a reason. No one in the Citadel had ever been able to tell me what it was.
A soft cry echoed down the hallway—one of the ten from the alignment of two sun cycles ago. Getting out of the open, I darted across to the apothecary, my slippers sliding on the shiny floor.
Before long, those young ones would move up to the top floors with the rest of us. And in only a couple of moon cycles, their replacements would arrive. I was excited to step outside these walls for the first time and celebrate their births with the rest of the city.
The apothecary door opened into inky darkness.
The lumin shard’s light washed over the benches, worn and nicked from years of use, smelling faintly of dried herbs.
A soot-streaked fireplace, large enough to step into, housed a copper cauldron in its hearth.
Sagging shelves lined the walls and held scrolls tied with frayed ribbon, corked amber glass bottles, and ceramic jars glazed in crackled blues and greens.
So unassumingly dangerous. Every vial could either cure or curse, depending on the hands that poured it.
Wait. In the corner—something didn’t seem right.
I stepped closer. The usual bundles of lavender and sage weren’t there. Hanging from the coffered ceiling in their place were deep purple-blue hooded flowers that drooped like executioner’s cowls. Their cloying scent was sharp as bitter almonds.
Wolfsbane.
My pulse stuttered. Poison. Lots and lots of it. Not a vial. Not a measured dose for a sick child. Enough to—I pressed the thought flat before it could finish itself. There would be an explanation. There was always an explanation.
I just couldn't think of one.